Drummer Wolfgang Haffner is one of Germany's most respected and experienced jazz musicians: his 30 year career features recordings with Al Cohn, Joe Pass and Till Bronner as well as numerous albums as leader. On Kind Of Cool he's joined by an excellent line-up of European jazzers, including pianist Jan Lundgren and trombonist Nils Landgren: their mix of classics and Haffner originals is a delight from first note to last.

Drummer Wolfgang Haffner is one of Germany's most respected and experienced jazz musicians: his 30 year career features recordings with Al Cohn, Joe Pass and Till Bronner as well as numerous albums as leader. On Kind Of Cool he's joined by an excellent line-up of European jazzers, including pianist Jan Lundgren and trombonist Nils Landgren: their mix of classics and Haffner originals is a delight from first note to last.

The title "Heart of the Matter" of Wolfgang Haffner's latest album is definitely more than just a play on words. For Germany's most highly decorated drummer, including the Echo Jazz 2010 award, his profession has been "a matter of the heart" ever since he began his career at the tender age of 18 in Albert Mangelsdorff's band. The work that followed for innumerable German and international stars and his participation on more than 400 albums bears witness to this. But only since he started recording his own albums as an ACT artist has he felt close to the "heart of the matter": "I don't see myself as just a drummer anymore, but as a universal musician. I compose, arrange, seek out and enter worlds of sound. That is my thing."

Kind of Blue isn't merely an artistic highlight for Miles Davis, it's an album that towers above its peers, a record generally considered as the definitive jazz album. To be reductive, it's the Citizen Kane of jazz – an accepted work of greatness that's innovative and entertaining…

In terms of public image, the scooter has long played second fiddle to the motorcycle. Of course, there is a large dose of stereotype in the readings of both kinds of machines and at heart both have provided the same thing: escape, independence, mobility and a certain kind of cool.

Early 90s founded the guitarist Chuck Loeb, the keyboardist Mitchel Forman and drummer Wolfgang Haffner fusion formation Metro, which has since published several albums. Headed by Michael Abene, these three musicians now took on the album Big Band Boom together with the WDR Big Band and guests Nicolas Fiszman (bass) and Roland Peil (perc). The name says it all: Metro pieces in big band with funky horns and driving rhythm section!

Thelonious Monk, in full Thelonious Sphere Monk (born Oct. 10, 1917, Rocky Mount, N.C., U.S. - died Feb. 17, 1982, Englewood, N.J.) American pianist and composer who was among the first creators of modern jazz. As the pianist in the band at Minton’s Playhouse, a nightclub in New York City, in the early 1940s, Monk had great influence on the other musicians who later developed the bebop movement. For much of his career, Monk performed and recorded with small groups. His playing was percussive and sparse, often being described as “angular,” and he used complex and dissonant harmonies and unusual intervals. A collection of some of the most remarkable recordings which laid the foundation of modern jazz and unfluenced generations of other musicians. The vast majority of these recordings became popular standards.

Serenely played music, free from needlessly hectic activity and tension' is, according to the sleevenotes of this, his third album as leader, what drummer/composer Wolfgang Haffner is aiming to produce with his regular trio (completed by pianist Hubert Nuss and bassist Lars Danielsson), augmented now and again by guitarists Dominic Miller and Chuck Loeb, singer Kim Sanders, trumpeter/keyboardist Sebastian Studnitzky, electric bassist Christian Diener, percussionist Ernst Ströer and trombonist Nils Landgren, plus a trombone/flute/clarinet section.